


in reverse, tragedy

by dolorife



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: (sort of), Age Swap, Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Court of Owls, Dehumanization of Talons, Dick Grayson is Robin, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Jason Todd is Not Red Hood, Jason Todd is Not Robin, Minor Character Death, POV Alternating, POV Third Person, Reverse Robins, The Looming Shadow of Bruce Batman Wayne, Unreliable Narrator, a modest sprinkling of swears, canon is a sandbox and i brought my own bucket, it's more likely than you think, jason going through a midlife crisis before he's legally allowed to drink?, oblique reference to assisted suicide, please appreciate my fight scene i worked very hard, talia 180s from passive-aggressive to very extremely aggressive in a snap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27038152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolorife/pseuds/dolorife
Summary: Two years after Batman fires Robin and Jason Todd (AKA Batboy) returns from an interstellar mission to find his sort-of little brother missing, Talia al Ghul’s jet touches down on Gotham soil.Her objective? Take revenge on the Court of Owls, the secret society hidden under Gotham that ordered Ra's al Ghul's death at the hands of a Talon, one of their personal assassins.In the Court's underground labyrinth, Talia is once again confronted by the Talon she fought when defending her father. During their intense battle, Talia manages to unmask him, and she realizes that this Talon is the key to answering a question that has plagued even the Batman: what happened to Dick Grayson?
Comments: 22
Kudos: 145
Collections: DCU Big Bang 2020





	in reverse, tragedy

**Author's Note:**

> WaterSoter blessed me with a truly stunning amount of art, and I am so incredibly happy that she picked my fic for DCUBB2020. 
> 
> Here are the individual DeviantArt links:  
> [Main Cover Art](https://www.deviantart.com/watersoter/art/in-reverse-tragedy-by-dolorife-CoverArt-20-DCUBB-859747215)   
> [Dick 'Chapter' Art](https://www.deviantart.com/watersoter/art/in-reverse-tragedy-by-dolorife-Art-2-DCUBB-2020-859748111)  
> [Talon Dick 'Chapter' Art](https://www.deviantart.com/watersoter/art/in-reverse-tragedy-by-dolorife-Art-3-DCUBB-2020-859748680)  
> [Talia 'Chapter' Art 1](https://www.deviantart.com/watersoter/art/in-reverse-tragedy-by-dolorife-Art-4-DCUBB-2020-859748989)  
> [Talia 'Chapter' Art 2](https://www.deviantart.com/watersoter/art/in-reverse-tragedy-by-dolorife-Art-5-DCUBB-2020-859749525)  
> [Talon 'Chapter' Art](https://www.deviantart.com/watersoter/art/in-reverse-tragedy-by-dolorife-Art-6-DCUBB-2020-859749752)  
> [Court of Owls 'Chapter' Art](https://www.deviantart.com/watersoter/art/in-reverse-tragedy-by-dolorife-Art-7-DCUBB-2020-859749990)
> 
> And here is the [AO3 link,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27296002) so please drop her a comment and/or shower her in compliments. She definitely deserves it for all the gorgeous art she made!

**TALIA**

**present.**

Three days of reconnaissance on a widely secret assassination enterprise is not nearly enough, in the opinion of Talia al Ghul. Even though she has dealt with less than ideal conditions for her entire life and, in just the past few weeks since her ascension as leader of the League of Assassins, has made vigilance into an artform, she knows she’s running out of time on many fronts. When the last grain of sand hits the bottom of the hourglass, it may not be just her who is targeted.

Talia has known time was a luxury she didn’t have even before she took out that first step out of the crisp, dry air of her private jet and into the fetid bog of Gotham City three days ago. A small contingent of her father’s loyal dogs have been nipping at her heels, clinging to her father’s favour even after Ra’s’ death, and this mission will be her only chance to quell whatever undercurrent of suspicion they hold regarding her role in her father’s death before their belief translates into action.

She is balancing on the point of a knife, blindfolded and surrounded, but she is practiced at twisting circumstance into advantage, and she has never needed her eyes to defeat an opponent. If all goes to plan, she will board her jet and be on her way home by tomorrow, and this time there will be less bodies to weigh them down. Though, there will be one left behind who she will miss, regardless of how he tries her patience. . . .

“May I meet my father _now_ , Mother?” asks Damian, her eleven-year-old son. He is perilously close to whining, as he has been since they arrived in Gotham and was told that he would not be brought to his father immediately. Talia has been able to distract him for a time by keeping him by her side, always by her side, and turning reconnaissance into a training exercise for him, but now the time for planning is over. Now, it is time to prepare for her assault upon her enemies, which means sitting in the hotel room she booked under one of her lesser-known pseudonyms, sharpening her blades and assembling the rest of her armoury. Unfortunately, it takes only minutes for this practice to bore her child.

“You will not meet your father until it is time,” she says, continuing to run a whetstone along her sword’s edge. It is not the first time she has answered this question.

“But _when_ will it be time?” Damian persists. This question is not new, either.

“When I say so.”

“But Mother—”

“Damian,” she says sharply and looks up from her sword for the first time. She stares into his eyes, green and flinty like her own, and waits for him to back down.

“Tt.” He subsides, crossing his arms and pouting.

Talia goes straight back to work, but smiles to herself. What a petulant little thing she created. She may have given him his eyes, his skin, and his life, but the stubbornness that has begun to reveal itself more and more as he grows can only have been inherited from his father. It can be grating, but Talia is glad that she had the foresight to let it grow in him unhindered: now, when she envisions the future she desires, she is counting on Damian’s stubbornness to wear down her beloved’s naïve stance on killing. Damian will be her crashing wave upon a limestone cliff; he will be what erodes the childish morality that Bruce Wayne clings to. Talia has already ensured this with Damian’s first kill, and reinforced it with all those subsequent. She wants her beloved at her side, and there is no one better to persuade him than his own son, who he cannot reject. Let him see in his son the resolve it takes to truly better the world—the resolve to kill.

Of course, nothing is certain. Wishes never are. If, in the end, her beloved chooses his delusion over their son, then he will have at least done his duty by training Damian and protecting him, however unknowingly, from the danger she will be facing in the years to come as she wrests total control over the League that is her rightful inheritance. Then, once it is safe, she will recall Damian back to her side and they will rule together, with or without Bruce Wayne.

However, ensuring Damian’s safety is not the only reason she has come to Gotham, even if all her reasonings overlap on the web of her ambition. In truth, Damian’s safety is not even her main goal. No, Talia’s true purpose in Gotham is simple: annihilate the Court of Owls. And if more of Ra’s al Ghul’s staunch supporters who volunteered to aid her in this endeavour fail to make it out of Gotham’s bowels alive rather than succeed?

All the better.

* * *

**JASON**

**two years previous.**

Here is a list of the top three things Jason Todd wants to come home to after a long mission:

  1. A chilidog from the food truck across the street from his studio apartment.
  2. For his succulents to not have died while he was away.
  3. A good book he’s already read multiple times that he can turn his brain off to.



It’s a simple list of simple things. He’s not asking for much—one of Jason’s core beliefs is that one shouldn’t ask too much of the world, not when the world thrives off of messing up the lives of people. No, if Jason really wants something then he has to go out and get it himself. He’s had to fight for every good thing in his life, after all, and it’s only when he sits back, when he watches and wishes and prays, that his life goes to shit.

That’s for the big stuff though.

For the little stuff, such as a chilli dog, a few plants, and a book, Jason thinks the world should have a little more common fucking courtesy.

First to go on his wish-list is the chilidog. It’s late enough for nearly everything to have closed-up hours ago, forcing Jason to stop off and get something at a 24/7 convenience store. Then, when he’s at the counter paying, the bored clerk tries to make conversation with him and dashes any consolation Jason had that he could have all the chilidogs he wants tomorrow.

Apparently, while Jason was in space saving the universe, the Joker escaped Arkham Asylum (again), went on a rampage (again), and in the chaos some opportunistic asshole arsonist with a grudge and poor hand-eye co-ordination threw a Molotov cocktail at his ex-girlfriend, missed spectacularly, and ended up lighting Jason’s preferred food truck on fire instead. Nobody was hurt, from what Jason could glean off the clerk, which is good. But it still means that Jason will be walking home without a chilidog for the foreseeable future, not just tonight. He could find somewhere else to get his chilidog fix, but Jason’s brand loyal through and through.

Once he gets home, Jason chucks his duffle bag in the vague direction of his dirty clothes hamper before making his way to the kitchen, dragging his feet and cracking his neck.

“Hello plant matter,” he murmurs as his sad convenience store burrito heats up in the microwave. He turns to look at the little pots squatting in a line on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. Before he can even begin his habitual inspection, his eyes catch on the limp, shrivelled corpse of his favorite succulent and it’s officially the saddest night of his life.

There goes number two on his wish-list. What a homecoming.

Trying to salvage his evening, he scarfs his disappointing dinner quickly and goes to his room to pluck his favorite book from his shelf before he lays down in his own bed for the first time since he left for space with the rest of the Teen Titans two months ago. He tries to immerse himself in the narrative flow until his mind empties of everything besides the slow-burn romance of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, but he can’t. His thoughts wander restlessly, relentlessly to the topic he most wants to shut away: the future.

Though Jason has his own place, he’s still living on Bruce’s dime. He turned twenty a few months ago, and with every year that passes it feels like he has less and less of an idea about what he wants to do with his life. Back before Bruce took him off the streets, gave him a home and a real chance at education, Jason didn’t have time to think about the future past what he could steal in order to buy his next meal. His focus was on survival. After Batman caught Jason stealing his tires and took him home with him instead of sticking him in juvie, suddenly Jason had time to think of things besides getting through the night without getting beat up on the streets and surviving the approaching winter, and Jason’s dumb kid self decided to use that time to plan out his future.

One week he wanted to be an astronaut, the next a detective, and the one after that an explorer. Typical kid, nothing could hold his interest long enough—until he decided he wanted to be an English professor. In his more fanciful imaginings, he would even be an author on the side, though that dream was quickly dashed once he realized he didn’t have a creative bone in his body. As a professor, though, he would get to read and discuss books all day long. It would be just like the discussions he had with Alfred, when Jason would wander into the kitchen after finishing a book while Alfred was cooking, except Jason would be getting paid. It used to sound so perfect.

Jason finally gives up and, frustrated, tosses _Pride and Prejudice_ to the side. Looks like the world is batting three for three today in terms of screwing him over.

God, he must have read almost a book a day back when he was a kid, despite his duties as Batboy and high school and Teen Titans work consuming all his time. Now he can’t even dredge up enough energy or focus to reread an old book, let alone anything new.

At times like these, when he can’t read but he also can’t shut his brain off enough to sleep, when he finds himself just lying alone in a bed he didn’t pay for and waiting for the day to hurry up and fold into the next, Jason wonders if he’s doing this whole “life” thing right. Maybe he should follow in Steph’s footsteps, hang up the cape and go to college instead. For a while now, whenever he goes out as Batboy, he feels like he’s just going through the motions, like he’s lost his core purpose or code. Or, he inevitably thinks, maybe he never had any of that to begin with. Maybe he’s just been following Bruce’s lead and he’s come to the point where he needs to forge his own path.

It seems almost unthinkable to give up his hero persona; he still can’t wrap his mind around how Steph was able to let Spoiler go, just like that, like it was an easy decision. Jason built Batboy from the ground up, he can’t imagine who he would be without it, but the idea of things staying the same is also becoming increasingly unbearable. He’s coming closer and closer to an ultimatum. . . . Either he forgets higher education altogether and becomes a full-time vigilante, or he lets Batboy die.

Jason scrubs his eyes with the heels of his palms. He hates thinking about this. He needs something or someone to distract him, to take him out of his own head for a while. There’s a moment where he contemplates going on patrol, but it passes quickly: tired and unfocused is the worst state to patrol in, and, unlike when he was younger, Jason knows when he’s reaching his limit.

He reaches for his cellphone instead. It’s on his side table, right where he left it before he left the planet, since he wouldn’t exactly have had reception in space.

Maybe he’ll call the manor, Jason considers as he holds down the power button. He usually calls the day after he gets home from a mission, timing it specifically so that only Alfred will be home. Bruce is a pain to talk to over the phone, only contributing to the conversation in grunts, orders, or awkward silence when it’s not about vigilante business, so Jason avoids calling him with dedication. And God forbid Jason’s replacement answers the phone. Dick is the exact opposite of Bruce, chatty and excitable and always asking when they were going to patrol or “hangout” together next. Jason honestly doesn’t know how Bruce puts up with that on a nightly basis—Jason was definitely never that annoying.

It’s – he looks at his alarm clock – nearing midnight, so Batman and Robin should be getting ready for their regular patrol around now, if they’re not already on it. If he calls now, either Alfred will pick up or no one will.

The first thing Jason sees when his phone boots up is that he has four voicemails—all from Dick, all almost a week old. Jason groans, long and loud. Did Bruce not tell Dick that Jason would have been literal worlds away when those calls were made, or was the brat just using Jason’s answering machine as a diary now? Either is equally as likely as the other, unfortunately.

Against his better judgement, Jason begins to play the messages—on speakerphone, though, so he can get up to peruse his bookshelf at the same time.

“ _So, funny story, B kicked me out,”_ the first message begins.

“No shit?” Jason murmurs, a little surprised.

He hadn’t thought Bruce was the kind of parent to kick their kid out onto the streets, especially considering his extensive knowledge of just how bad things can be out there. Then again, maybe Jason spent too much time running away as a kid – in earnest at the beginning, then just to prove a point whenever Bruce pissed him off – for Bruce to ever feel the need to kick him out.

Still, Bruce actually kicking out his new and improved golden child seems unlikely.

Jason tunes back in. _“. . . can’t be trusted to make the right call, yada yada – you know how he is – so he, uh, fired me too?”_

At this Jason rolls his eyes. The kid got benched, big deal. Jason used to get benched every other week when he was working as Bruce’s live-in sidekick.

_“I figured it’d be cool with you if I crashed at your place for a while. I’m already on my way, so even if you’re just screening my calls and you listen to this message right after I’m done, you’re still too late. You’ll just have to deal with me cramping your style.”_

There’s a short lag, broken when Dick says, _“Hold on a sec_.”

After that, the audio becomes muffled. There’s some brief, unintelligible voices but then it goes quiet for long enough that Jason, incredulous, starts to suspect Dick forgot he was in the middle of a very one-sided conversation.

The kid abruptly comes back online long enough to say, _“I’m actually at my stop now, so I’ll see you soon, OK? Bye Jay.”_

“Good luck with that,” Jason says under his breath. Even if Jason hadn’t been off Earth at the time, Dick still wouldn’t have found Jason at the burner house he had the address to.

The second message begins to play, but Jason only listens to this one with half an ear as he starts paging through _Things Fall Apart_ , hoping it will kindle a spark of interest. The only thing that sticks out to Jason in the second message, the thing that makes him scoff bitterly and shove the novel back in its place, is when Dick refers to him as being “Bruce Wayne’s son.” Last he checked, only one of Brucie Wayne’s wards had been adopted, and it wasn’t Jason.

The third message is just Dick being a little shit, but it does at least provide Jason with some evil anticipation for the next message: Dick still thinks he’s breaking into Jason’s real apartment, and his outrage is going to be hilarious as hell.

Dick’s final message isn’t funny, though. It starts off promising enough, but Dick’s tone, even with the distortion it picks up from coming through the phone, is all wrong. The words are angry, sure. And threatening to bring Alfred into things? That’s going straight for the throat. But Dick’s voice is all bruises, and whatever anger is present is only there as an attempt to hide its soft underbelly.

Great. He hurt the kid’s feelings.

The guilt is already making itself known in the way Jason keeps hearing, over and over in his head, what Dick said before hanging up: “ _Not cool, Jay._ ”

The thing is, Dick’s right. It really had been a shitty thing for Jason to do, however justified he felt at the time. Most of the time he knows that none of this is Dick’s fault, that he didn’t intend to replace Jason, but that doesn’t always stop the bitterness from welling up in his throat, and most of the time isn’t always.

He remembers the ecstatic look of Dick’s face, the way he was practically vibrating in order to hold himself back from hugging Jason. Maybe, in Dick’s mind, Jason had just given him permission to invade his home and life in a very roundabout way that was more typical with Bruce. Jason had seen an opportunity—and not just for entertainment. It would serve as a quick and easy lesson for Dick – who is always bugging Jason into letting him spend more time with the Teen Titans – to back off, to stop pestering Jason like he’ll cave as easily as Steph.

Granted, Jason hadn’t expected for Dick to exercise so much restraint and not go to the burner house the very next day, but when nothing immediately happened Jason had just shrugged and moved on, occasionally looking forward to the day when Dick tried to darken his doorstep but mostly sure that the kid lost the address.

Guess he was wrong.

Jason drags his hands roughly through his hair, then resigns himself to doing what he knows needs to be done. Step one: suit up, since he doesn’t exactly want to waltz into one of his sketchy burner houses as a civilian. As for step two . . . he’ll figure out what step two is later, on the slim chance that Dick is still bumming around the burner house.

Jason pinches the bridge of his nose, a headache already threatening to emerge. 

There’s a reason he never asked for a little brother.

* * *

**TALIA**

**present.**

Talia sheaths her sword with a smooth, decisive motion. She has played the part of the patient anvil for as long as she could, but now, as the sun lowers itself to Gotham’s skyline in an orange and pink plume of pollution, it is time to be the hammer. It is time to strike, and strike hard.

She stands and secures her sword at her back. Then she methodically equips her knives and guns to her person. Damian watches this process attentively from his hotel bed, where he has been pretending to meditate. The moment the last buckle is in place, he opens his mouth.

“Is it time?” he asks.

Talia goes to kneel in front of him and brings her hand up to stroke his cheek.

“It is,” she says gently. “Are you ready?”

“I packed before we—”

She shakes her head. “No, Damian. I know you are sufficiently prepared, but that does not mean you are ready.”

Her child frowns, uncertain.

“This is where we part ways, perhaps for years,” she explains. “Are you ready to leave my side?”

“But . . . it’s not forever. We will be together again,” Damian says. “Won’t we?”

Talia smiles, raising herself to kiss his brow. “We will be together again,” she confirms, then leans her brow against his. “Your place will always be at my side, my son.”

They stay this way for a precious moment, wherein Talia closes her eyes and Damian doesn’t blink once, until Talia sighs and gets to her feet.

“You know the way?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Off with you, then.”

“Good-bye, Mother,” he says, but then lingers by the door instead of leaving.

“What is it?” Talia asks.

“. . . You are going to get revenge on Grandfather’s killer?” Damian asks. He’s stalling, but Talia decides not to discipline him over it. She doesn’t want their last moments here together to be unpleasant.

“If we all do our part, yes.”

She turns away to begin putting away her surveillance equipment, paying him no mind. Again, he hesitates. And again, Talia allows it, this time by keeping her back to him and pretending not to see. Finally, he straightens up, shoulders his pack, and then he’s gone.

Once his footsteps have faded away, Talia hooks her communications unit into her ear.

“Start getting into position,” she orders. “As soon as night falls, we converge.”

If the foundation of her plan is successful, then Damian’s presence will do its job and ensure that the Batman will not be an obstacle in the way of justice tonight. With one son dead and the other estranged, Bruce will be unable to dismiss the emergence of another, especially when this one is his by blood.

* * *

**JASON**

**two years previous.**

Once he has climbed through the tiny en-suite bathroom window of his burner house, Jason takes a moment to conscientiously assure himself that the edges of his cape won’t be caught before sliding the window shut behind him.

“Time’s up, squatter!” he calls out to announce his presence. He doesn’t want to sneak up on the kid and give him a heart attack, after all (unlike _some people_ ). “You’re about to be forcibly evicted on account of being a little shit.”

There’s no answer, and when Jason strolls into the bedroom he finds the bed unoccupied and – he smooths a hand down the mattress, looks at the residue left on his black gloves – dusty. No Goldilocks in this bed.

“Dick?” Jason says, projecting his voice.

No answer again. The kid, if he was here, would have woken up at this point. In all likelihood, Dick came here and didn’t even spend the night before he was back at the manor, snug at the heart of the safest place in Gotham, but Jason prides himself on being thorough. He walks out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, and is brought up short in surprise: there’s a backpack, tightly zipped around its bulging contents, on his kitchen counter. Though Jason has never seen Dick’s backpack, but he has no doubt that this one, covered in superhero patches and pins ranging from Batman to Green Lantern, is Dick’s.

The sight of it laying there, on the countertop of a silent kitchen with only the city’s lights filtering through the kitchen window to illuminate it, strikes Jason as being somewhat eerie. In the apartment’s greyscale of dust, Dick’s red backpack is the only splotch of color. Something about the scene is reminiscent of the horror movies Jason would force himself to watch with Roy when they were kids, unwilling to admit that the movies made him uncomfortable and would sometimes give him nightmares. The silences that came before a jump scare were always the worst.

Jason searches for a light switch and ignores the swoop banking lower and lower in his gut until, finally, he finds it and the feeling falls out of him like a sigh. He can’t help but take a moment to roll his eyes at himself.

“Wake up, you little twerp,” he says as he walks the short distance to the living room, aiming for the sofa.

When he reaches the sofa and finds it empty, dusty and untouched just like the bed, his body reacts faster than his mind. The swoop in his gut returns and seems to be dragging the air in his lungs down with it. He tries to ignore the feeling as he did before, but it’s harder this time: his every inhale become shallower, every exhale is punched out of him.

Something is wrong.

Jason about-faces, his cape snapping at his heels like the warning nip of a stray dog, back to the kitchen. He grabs at Dick’s bag roughly, nearly rips off the zipper in his haste to open it, and dumps its contents indelicately onto the counter. There’s an urgency to his moments that his mind won’t allow him to parse right now, and it makes him abandon the cool, methodical way he was taught to catalogue potential clues and evidence.

He isn’t sure what he’s looking for as he sifts through Dick’s bag, but the way his heartbeat resounds through his body and makes his chest go hot and tight lets him know he isn’t finding it.

Or maybe it’s because he’s finding too much. There’s clothes (including an old brown leather jacket, completely incongruous with the balmy summer), a stick of deodorant, a laptop, a couple of books (one of which, oddly enough, is wrapped in paper with a loud balloon print and is addressed to Jason; he tears it open without guilt, flips through it hoping against hope that it contains some kind of clue, and turns up nothing), a cellphone so dead it won’t turn on, and a stuffed elephant. Everything here is potentially replaceable, but the fact remains: Dick wouldn’t have just left all this stuff here.

Not voluntarily. Not unless the kid is more careless than Jason has thought in even his most uncharitable moments.

Jason battles against the unexpected desire to pretend that the suspicion he’s hiding under his tongue doesn’t exist, as though the situation will stop being real if he doesn’t acknowledge it. He picks up the elephant, looks at its big floppy ears and worn button eyes. God, it’s already well past the forty-eight-hour window. God.

He calls the manor.

“ _Wayne residence—_ ”

“Is Dick there?” Jason demands as soon as Alfred picks up.

“ _Master Jason, you’re home_ ,” Alfred says. His tone is so dissonant with what Jason’s feeling that, for a moment, Jason thinks he might puke.

Jason’s jaw clenches. “Is Dick. There.”

“ _I’m afraid Master Dick is out at the moment_ ,” Alfred says, obliquely.

Wildly, Jason wonders at this evasiveness. Is it due to Alfred’s loyalty to Bruce above all else? Does Alfred not think that Jason has the right to know how Bruce and Dick get along, how they have fights just like Bruce and Jason do? Or does Alfred just not appreciate Jason’s tone.

“Look,” Jason says, “I know he and Bruce had a fight, but that was a week ago. They must have made up by now.”

“ _One would hope. It would seem, however, that disappointment abounds._ ”

“Bruce is still his dad though. He must have checked up on him or–or called, at least.”

“ _I’m afraid Master Wayne has been preoccupied of late_ ,” Alfred says, and the fact that he calls Bruce “Master Wayne” instead of his customary “Master Bruce” tells Jason his opinion on Bruce’s behavior. Unfortunately, no amount of disapproval is going to help or change anything.

“You mean he’s hiding in his cave, burying himself in cases and pretending he doesn’t have emotions again,” Jason says flatly, picking up on the subtext with the ease of experience.

He remembers when Bruce first started behaving like this, still feels the echoes of frustration that Jason can’t seem to get past. He was around fifteen when it started, maybe sixteen, and it seemed that the older Jason got, the less Bruce trusted him to fight at his side. Previously routine patrols became an excuse to lecture Jason about his recklessness, how he was constantly putting himself in danger, how he got a B instead of an A on some test at school, and every scrape became just another failure to add to Jason’s tally. Suddenly, Bruce was treating Jason like he was a newbie, like they hadn’t had each others’ backs for years. Suddenly, fighting bad guys at Batman’s side lost its magic.

Not long after, Jason started spending more and more time with the Teen Titans, and threw himself into proving to the world and to himself (and to Bruce) that he was capable even out of Batman’s shadow. In retaliation for this, Bruce went out and replaced Jason with a newer model.

“When did you last speak with him? Or – no – do you have a tracker on him? Where is he?”

“ _Yes, of course_ ,” he says, calm and reasonable. Jason has always appreciated Alfred’s ability to stay calm no matter what, but not now. Right now, it’s infuriating, and the only thing stopping Jason from lashing out is the fact that he is hanging on Alfred’s every fucking word. “ _Rest assured, I have been monitoring his trackers regularly, and he has stayed within the radius of one of your own safehouses_.”

Jason’s throat clicks when he tries to swallow. “Which trackers are you looking at,” he says. There’s only one thought running on repeat through his head: Don’t say it. Please don’t say it. Please don’t.

“ _As Master Dick left without his suit, he only had two trackers on his person, the one in his phone and the one sewn into his backpack_.”

“Damnit,” he says, shockingly quiet, like a breath in the dark. Then the rising tide of emotion Jason’s been keeping at bay with a fingernail’s worth of control explodes out of him and he screams it, again and again, over and over until he’s taking breaths in great gulps of air. His body trembles with a sort of restrained energy so strong it has him lashing out: the fridge door indents from the strength of his kick, by the steel toes of his boots.

But it doesn’t help. When the outward violence doesn’t settle him, all it does is turn inward.

An unexpected exhaustion hits him, bringing him almost literally to his knees. He stumbles back and hits a wall, then slides down until he’s sitting on the kitchen floor amidst the dust. Vaguely, he registers Alfred’s voice coming from the phone loosely cradled in one of his hands, his veneer of calm finally pierced. It sounds very far away, though Jason doesn’t know if that’s because his arm has dropped to his side or for another reason entirely.

In his other hand, he still holds Dick’s stuffed elephant. It’s the kind that sits permanently on its haunches; if it were a dog, it would look like it was begging for treats. Jason wonders if the thing has a name, if Dick ever told him and he just forgot, if Dick told him and he even paid attention. He wonders and spirals and thinks of these remnants of Dick Grayson sitting still and cold for a week on the shitty countertop of Jason’s burner house. He doesn’t know where to go from here.

Slowly, he raises his phone back up to his ear. “I think Dick is missing,” he says, and the truth of it only truly sinks in as he’s forcing the words out of his mouth. He doesn’t know where to go from here. For all his experience as a vigilante superhero, Jason has never felt so certain as he does in this moment that the world is ending.

* * *

**TALIA**

**present.**

The entrances to the Court of Owls’ lair that see the most foot traffic are located in the richer parts of Gotham. Talia discovers this within the first day of observation, when she only had the knowledge of one entrance to start off with. All she had to do was stake out that one entrance – a secret door in the plinth of a monument in Robinson Park – and send her minions to tail any and all who went in or out; by the end of the day, she knew of the many doorways hidden across the Upper East Side, the City Hall District, the Diamond District, and more. She also took note of every person who came and went, compiling two lists: that of known Court members, for the ones who go unmasked around Gotham; and another of the assassins, called Talons, who are rarer to see but always the same in attire, body language, and purpose.

She keeps an eye out for the one she tracked here, but to her knowledge he does not make an appearance. Despite the fact that he and the rest of these so-called Talons of the Court bear the same characteristics, Talia knows she will recognize him—perhaps not in a glance, but certainly if she crosses swords with him again. He was worth remembering.

Now, standing in front of the monument which harbors the first doorway discovered, Talia waits in order to give the other two-man squads spread across Gotham enough time to get in position.

“Recent events have certainly been in your favour, haven’t they,” her teammate remarks once the explosives are set up. Out of her view, he begins to idly toss the remote for the explosives up and down in his hand.

There is a tension in Talia, completely separate from him, that she always feels before a good and bloody fight. She has been taught that its name is _adrenaline_ , but she has personally come to know it as _bloodlust_ and the anticipation of its satiation. She enjoys the moments before a battle when she has the luxury to meditate on this feeling, and would prefer to do so in silence. Still, she replies, “The circumstances have hardly been ideal.”

“Come now, Talia,” he says, carrying the same condescension he always does when addressing someone other than Ra’s al Ghul. “Don’t do me disservice.”

“I do you no disservice,” Talia says coldly. 

“Whether you admit it or not, it has always been your ambition to be more than just heir to your father. Anyone would get impatient.”

She knows what he’s implying. It is all he and his ilk have been thinking since she announced her father’s assassination. Some believe that, where she could have saved the Demon’s Head, she chose to let him perish. Others believe she acted on her own and now uses the Court as a scapegoat, all done in a bid for power. Many insisted on being included in this battle because of these suspicions. It is also the reason Talia allowed it.

What they fail to grasp is how unimportant the particulars of her father’s death are. Perhaps, by the time she arrived to drive off the assassin, Ra’s’ injury was too severe for him to make it to a Lazarus Pit for healing before he expired. Perhaps she slit his throat to put him out of his misery. Perhaps he could have made it to a Pit but instead she sat there and watched him choke as he drowned in his own blood. It doesn’t matter how it happened. The facts remain: the Demon is dead, long live the Demon.

“What do you want, Cain,” she says, bored.

“It’s interesting that such an insignificant organization would set itself up against the League,” he says, not answering her question. “If I’m not mistaken – and I’m not – the Court has been little more than a footnote in the League’s database since its conception. At times it even seems as if the only reason the Court has gained any notice in recent years is because they operate in the same city as the Batman . . . your lover.” 

“What do you _want_ , Cain,” Talia repeats as she checks her watch. Soon.

Abruptly, he turns to face her. Up until now, he had kept his back to the plinth, staring out into Robinson Park at night and ostensibly keeping an eye out for street scavengers picking at trashcan scraps, while she faced the hidden entrance of the plinth head-on. It allowed them the illusion of speaking past each other, for all they stood shoulder to shoulder. He looks at her now, and from the corner of her eye Talia can see that he has schooled his expression. Yet his eyes, the blue of them completely consumed by his pupils, betray him.

He stops playing with the detonation remote.

“What are your intentions moving forward with the League?” he asks. It’s the first time he doesn’t sound like he’s talking down to her.

“You’re speaking of your little pet project.”

“Yes.”

“I,” says Talia, “am not my father. My feelings have not changed on the matter. I’ll have no part of it.”

“Talia—”

She brings a finger up to her comm. unit and it crackles to life. “Sound off,” she orders.

“ _Squad A is in position._ ”

“ _Squad B, in position._ ”

On it goes, until it is confirmed that all twelve teams are in place.

“All squads move out,” she says. Then, to Cain, “Open the door.”

Without delay, no doubt suppressing a great many ill feelings he holds for Talia, Cain presses a button on his remote and triggers a quick succession of explosions. The damage done is small, but meticulously controlled. In a loud percussion that reminds Talia of the staccato beat of a machine gun, a section of the granite plinth in front of them begins to spit dust and debris before it crumbles altogether to form the recognizable shape of a doorway. Talia cannot deny Cain’s skill, no matter how distasteful she finds him.

The vast majority of the other entranceways that her teams are stationed at don’t require a forceful approach, fortunately—only enough skill to break into a rich politician’s home office where a door masquerades as a bookshelf or the upper body strength to raise a manhole cover. Talia is hoping that her and Cain’s more easily detectable arrival will give those with stealthier entry points an advantage.

Talia steps over the rubble and immediately perceives the steep decline awaiting her. There is no quandary of which road to travel; there is only one road to take, and it leads her south. Down, down, to the belly of the beast. After all, there’s no better place to pluck out a heart than from within.

* * *

**DICK**

**two years & six days previous.**

This is how Dick starts off the message: “So, funny story, B kicked me out.”

He’s trying for casual, but it’s tragically offset by his obvious attempt to rip off the proverbial Band-Aid. It still stings, feels raw in a way that’s somehow worse than the newly stitched bullet wound in his shoulder (courtesy of Two-Face) that started this whole mess.

The bus he’s on judders to a stop, and Dick ends up knocking elbows with the businessman occupying the window-seat next to him before he can prevent it. Biting back a groan at the starburst of pain when the impact reverberates up his arm and to his bad shoulder, Dick grimaces at the businessman in apology.

“And apparently,” he continues, shifting uncomfortably and feeling his shirt stick to his back, “I’m too reckless or whatever, can’t be trusted to make the right call, yada yada – you know how he is – so he, uh, fired me too?

“So—I need somewhere to stay and since you gave me your address, I figured it’d be cool with you if I crashed at your place for a while. I’m already on my way, so even if you’re just screening my calls and you listen to this message right after I’m done, you’re still too late. You’ll just have to deal with me cramping your style.”

They start moving again. Dick looks up briefly to clock the new passengers; there are more of them than he’d thought there would be, considering how crowded the bus was before it made its stop, but Dick hasn’t ever had to take a bus at this time before and it’s early morning. It makes sense that this would be prime time for people commuting to work.

No seats are available; even finding a free spot with something to hold onto seems to be a struggle. A young mother ends up standing in the aisle near Dick, one arm stretching up to hold the metal bar above their heads while the other keeps her dozing four- or five-year-old daughter secured to her hip. The little girl is wearing a backpack shaped like a teddy bear.

“Hold on a sec,” he tells Jason. He presses his phone to his shoulder, then stands and pulls the cord to get off at the next step.

“Excuse me,” he says to the young mother, tapping her shoulder lightly to get her attention. “Do you want my seat? I’m almost at my stop.”

She accepts immediately, thanking him as he gets himself and his backpack out of her way. He even manages to dredge up a genuine smile for her and her daughter before he’s swallowed up by the crush of people.

Standing in the crowded bus, boxed in on all sides by bodies giving off enough heat to turn the close-textured, hot air of the bus into something sweltering, Dick finds he doesn’t mind it too much. It reminds him of the circus, where everybody lived on top of each other whether they liked it or not. The people didn’t bother him, though he could do without the heat.

What he wouldn’t give to be back in the trailer he and his parents shared, to feel the cool condensation from the poorly sealed window dampening the back of his shirt instead of sweat, curled up between his parents under the same knit blanket and listening to their stories. If he were to close his eyes and reach deep enough, he knows he could imagine it so clearly he could almost pretend he’s still there, but he doesn’t. Even though it’s hard, he keeps his eyes open, facing forward. He’s already homesick enough; if he closes his eyes, he might just get lost in it.

The bus begins its slow, screeching halt.

Dick hurriedly brings his phone back to his ear. “I’m actually at my stop now,” he says, “so I’ll see you soon, OK? Bye Jay.”

He hangs up.

It takes some tricky maneuvering, especially with only one arm handy to carry his bulging backpack and push the doors to open, but Dick manages. The air outside smells of exhaust, and even this early in the morning it’s hot and humid in the thick of summer. Dick’s only wearing a tank top and denim jean shorts, but his arm sling is thick and clinging to him with sweat. Still, it’s a relief to be out of the bus’s recycled air, where he could feel his own hot breath against his face. Even when he checks his GPS and sees just how far away he is from Jason’s apartment, he’s still relieved.

By the time he’s looking skeptically up at the ramshackle apartment building Jason gave him the address to, Dick is wiping his brow with the collar of his shirt and wishing he had some shades. He feels better than he did on the bus – lighter, freer – but only by a thin margin. An air-conditioned apartment is sounding really good right now. The only thing keeping him in place is the fact that—

“Your apartment is a real dump, huh?” Dick is leaving another voice message, and beginning to suspect that Jason might not actually be screening his calls.

“Is this, like, an incognito thing?” Dick asks. “Are you so deep that you need to live and breathe your cover? ’Cause I guarantee you’re not fooling anybody. Everyone knows Jason Todd is Bruce Wayne’s son and has cash coming out the wazoo.”

Nevertheless, Dick walks up to the front door. He’s about to buzz in, hoping against hope that Jason’s actually home, when he notices that someone has wedged a book between the door and the jam so it can’t close properly.

“You definitely need to re-evaluate your life choices,” Dick says before he hangs up. 

Dick pulls the door open wider to slip inside and carefully inserts the book (a paperback Bible) back in place. The inside of the building is just as shabby as the outside, and has the distinct odor of cat piss, but otherwise it’s fine. There are no valuables lying about, no pictures on the walls or potted plants dotting the area, but that’s to be expected: if there had been any décor, it probably would’ve been carried off by someone who, like Dick, discovered the book-in-the-door trick.

He finally finds apartment B12 after climbing a few flights of stairs and getting turned around twice, but when he knocks there’s no answer. Dick knocks again, then immediately presses his ear to the door. No movement—not a great sign.

Still, Dick’s stubborn enough to be an optimist: he tries calling again. If Jason is home and just screening his calls, maybe Dick will be able to hear the ringer. Then he can annoy Jason into letting him in.

The phone rings and rings and rings, but it’s all on Dick’s end. Nothing is heard from inside the apartment and, once again, he’s put through to voicemail.

“Hey Jason, it’s Dick. _Again_. Just calling to let you know that I’m about to break into your apartment, so if you have any objections you better speak up now or forever hold your peace.” Dick listens to empty air for a second. “Sounds a lot like permission to me!”

He stows his phone in his backpack for now and extracts half a dozen bobby pins spread out between all the pockets in his jean shorts. Always be prepared, as Bat “Boy Scout” Man says. This will be tricky without his actual lockpicks, and a little painful with his shoulder, but he’s sure he can do it. He slips his bad arm out of its sling gingerly. There’s a twinge, but it’s bearable—the pain meds must still be holding out. He bends a couple bobby pins into the shapes he wants easily, and it’s only as he crouches down on the flat beige carpet before Jason’s door that he experiences a moment of doubt.

Would Jason be mad at him if he broke into his apartment?

Jason isn’t very fond of Dick (not yet, at least; it’s still a work in progress), but they have been getting closer. Dick is sure that if he keeps trying Jason will eventually like him, and then, just like when Dick gets Bruce to smile, all his hard work will be worth it—though, Dick does hope that, unlike how it is with Bruce, it will get easier to get Jason to like him as time goes on instead of harder. It’s been working too: a couple months ago, Jason took Dick aside after their joint patrol – a rarity for Batboy and Robin – and said, “Hey, I know how difficult it is to live with B all the time. If you ever need a place to go and cool off, you can come here. Door’s always open.” Then he handed Dick a scrap bit of paper with his address on it.

The thing is, when Jason gave Dick his address, he only meant for it to be used temporarily. That had been obvious. It’s a place where Dick can go to “cool off” when Bruce gets too brooding or grumpy or demanding, but always with the expectation that he’ll return to the manor. Return to Bruce.

Dick chews his lip. The last words Bruce said to him are still ringing in his ears, telling him to get out, to leave his key, and that he’s no longer welcome at the manor. And before that are the words, “You could have _died_ , Dick!” There had been anguish in Bruce’s voice, real and terrible, but it was warring with anger, and the anger had won out.

Dick is pretty sure that he isn’t going back.

Dick is pretty sure he _can’t_ go back; Bruce doesn’t want him anymore.

Dick scowls. Whatever. You know what? Screw Batman and screw Bruce. Dick doesn’t want him either, not after he fired Dick and tried to take Robin away as if he had a right. As if on a whim he could strip Dick of the name his mother gave him. And if Jason doesn’t let him stay, then he’ll ask one of the Teen Titans. They may be Jason’s team and Jason’s friends, they may treat Dick like he’s just their shared kid brother sometimes, but he’s sure that at least one of them would be willing to let him stay with them. And if not, that’s fine too!

Steph might have gone AWOL ever since she hung up Spoiler and got busy with college, but Dick knows she still cares about him. She likes him and thinks he’s funny—she even told him so. It was Steph who would bring Dick to Teen Titans meetings or hang-outs whenever Jason was dragging his feet. She even took Dick for ice-cream out of costume a couple times, and they would snicker together as Dick swiped Bruce’s credit card to pay for their double-scoop waffle cones. Steph is his sister like Jason is his brother, even though she hadn’t been taken in by Bruce. Dick’s sure that, if he asked, she would let him crash on her couch for a week.

Heck, he could go to Metropolis and Uncle Clark would probably make a whole room up for him. If Dick is persuasive enough, Clark might even wait a few days before calling Bruce—just long enough for Dick to be ready to strike out on his own. The only drawback is that Uncle Clark probably wouldn’t want Dick to be living by himself somewhere, no matter the fact that, though Dick may only be fifteen, he’s been Robin since he was nine-years-old. He’s been protecting and taking care of other people as Robin for years now, and if he can take care of others, then he can take care of himself. He might be forced to sneak out, but even Robin would have a hard time sneaking past Superman.

Whatever. The point is, he’s got options.

That determined, Dick carefully inserts his makeshift lockpicks into the lock of Jason’s apartment. The lock gives way with almost no effort from Dick at all, and he twists the doorknob, almost bewildered. This is the quickest he’s ever picked a lock before. Either he’s gotten as good as Catwoman or something fishy is going on here.

When he enters the apartment, the first thing he notices is the smell.

It reminds him of Haly’s, when the circus had just arrived somewhere new and had to unpack the tent. Every adult would be spaced out, holding the tent taut and high enough off the ground that Dick and most of the other kids wouldn’t even need to stoop to walk under it. And they would walk under it—it was their job. The kids would all congregate at the center of the tent, reaching up to prop up the sagging middle, and then the adults would start to flap the tent up and down, creating a wave. Dick remembers feeling the breeze the tent created, remembers jumping, laughing, straining both his arms up as high as they could go and never even skimming the tent on its upswing.

He remembers the smell of the dust being beaten out of the tent as it rained down on him, tinging his hair grey and greasy. He remembers the musty smell of something that’s been left untouched for days, weeks, months. That’s what Jason’s apartment smells like.

There’s a bad feeling in Dick’s gut, like the kind he still gets when his English teacher calls on him to read a passage aloud just so he can correct all of Dick’s wrong pronunciations in front of the entire class. It’s a hot and uncomfortable feeling, a kind of dormant, waiting humiliation. Jason would never live somewhere the lock is so easily picked, which means this must be a safe house. Even worse, it means the apartment is a safe house Jason doesn’t care about, doesn’t feel the need to safeguard. It’s just a glorified crash pad, a place Jason’s prepared to burn, no muss no fuss.

Which means Jason never gave Dick his home address, and he never gave Dick an open invitation to come hang-out.

Geez, Dick thinks as the heat in his gut finally rushes to his face. And Jason could probably read Dick’s assumption all over his face, probably relieved that he hadn’t handed out his _real_ address to his dumb sort-of brother. And Dick had thought he was being so good, restraining himself from barging in on Jason whenever he wanted.

Walking into the apartment only confirms what Dick already knows. He comes out of the cramped hallway to land smackdab in a small living space that holds a loveseat with a grey sheet thrown overtop of it and nothing else, not even a TV. There’s one door that, once opened, reveals the bedroom, which at least has more furniture than the living room: there’s a tall, lightly stained wooden dresser, a bare mattress (its sheet probably sacrificed for the sake of the loveseat), and another door, left ajar, sharing a glimpse of a utilitarian washroom. Dick ends his inspection in the kitchen, and he isn’t surprised when he opens the cupboards and finds them bare and empty.

He calls Jason again, one last time.

“You gave me the address to one of your crappy safe houses, you jerk,” he says, forgoing any niceties. He can still feel the heat in his cheeks, warming up his eyes. He pretends it’s because he’s angry, not because he’s hurt. “And it’s a _really_ crappy safe house. You have, like, zero food. Not even—” Dick opens the fridge, just to be sure— “not even an old jar of pickles or something.”

He slams the fridge shut. Flings his backpack onto the kitchen counter and huffs.

“What kind of safe house has nothing to eat? I guess I’ll just order take-out and tell Alfred I had no other choice because my big brother gave me directions to an empty freaking apartment. Next time I see your ugly mug, it better be to tell me where you actually live. _Not_ cool, Jay.” Dick hangs up and chucks his phone carelessly onto the counter next to his bag, then slumps forward to bury his face in his backpack.

His stomach growls.

Alfred had only just finished stitching Dick’s shoulder up after Batman and Robin’s night took a turn for the bloody when Bruce laid into him, and after that Dick had wanted to get out of the manor as quickly as he could. He only gave himself enough time to stuff some of his more important belongings in his backpack before he was hightailing it. There had been no time for food, but Alfred is always sneaking snacks into Dick’s backpack and utility belt. Maybe Alfred snuck something into Dick’s bag before he left?

Dick straightens and hops onto the counter, drawing his legs up with him so he can sit cross-legged. Then swivels his body towards his backpack. The small front and side pockets are searched first, as the most accessible places, but they come up empty. Next is unzipping the backpack’s main pocket, though by now Dick has pretty much lost hope.

He does a half-hearted search, but everything in his backpack, from his deodorant and laptop to the novel Jason got him for his last birthday and his stuffed elephant Zitka (he takes a moment to cuddle her), is all stuff Dick packed himself. It makes sense, Dick guesses. After Bruce told him to get lost, Dick hadn’t stayed long enough to say good-bye to Alfred, something he feels a sharp twinge of guilt for now. Dick wonders if Alfred even knows he’s gone yet, since Alfred had left the Batcave after stitching Dick up to give him and Bruce privacy for one of their arguments, which had been becoming more and more frequent lately.

Dick looks down at his belongings and, really, all that’s missing is his framed Flying Graysons poster and his dad’s old guitar. Both were too bulky to carry out of the manor on his back, especially since he was in a rush. It hurt to leave those pieces of himself behind—it still hurts, if he’s honest, but he reassures himself that Alfred will send them to him if he asks. Before he can do that, though, he needs to find a place for Alfred to send them _to_.

Dick zips his bag back up with a sigh.

That’s something to figure out later. First, he has to make good on his threat to Jason and order a bunch of junk food. Though, as he takes another look at the spartan apartment that has more dust than furniture, he realizes that he really doesn’t want to spend anymore time here than he has to. A good diner and a vanilla milkshake would be way better than take-out, anyway. Decisively, Dick stands up on the counter and performs a front-flip off of it, keeping his bad arm tight against his torso. His sneakers smack lightly against the linoleum floor and stick there – a perfect landing – before he double-checks that he still has his wallet. He picks up his phone and debates for a second over whether to bring it with him or not but, in the end, tucks it away into his backpack.

He won’t need it while he’s eating, and if Jason calls then it’ll serve him right when he gets put through to voicemail.

* * *

**TALIA**

**present.**

Time becomes nebulous very quickly in darkness. A second is less tangible than the muted thudding of the pulse in Talia’s neck, a minute is less reliable than every regulated breath she takes as she runs, and an hour is less perceptible than the slow calcification throughout her body as her adrenaline begins to wane.

By the rushing in her blood, Talia estimates that it takes no more than forty-five minutes for the first of the Court’s Talons to confront her and Cain.

There is a sharp displacement of air and Talia follows it with her blade. At the same time, she ignites a flare. The first Talon of the night impales itself upon Talia’s blade before her eyes have fully adjusted to the flare’s sparking glow. Up close and cast in eerie red light, Talia can make out the glinting copper rims of the Talon’s round goggles, the wicked tip of its small beak, and its spiked horns—the latter two of which she can only assume are purely decorative. She feels a split second of disappointment – the Talon put more effort into its death than she did – before five more Talons drop down from the tunnel’s ceiling, seemingly detaching from the shadows to become unsure black silhouettes.

Much better, Talia thinks as she sloughs the limp form off her sword and lets the flare fall, still luminous, at her feet. This time, she is the one who attacks first, and she very nearly cleaves a Talon in two. She stabs another in the chest, guts another, and yet another she liberates of an arm and head. As she is deflecting a throwing knife while also dodging a Talon’s dual-wielded daggers, she spares half a thought for Cain and is rewarded for the lapse with a shallow slash to her left cheek by the Talon in front of her. She takes a half step back and raises a hand to her face, the blood already streaming down. If the Talon had aimed any higher, she might have lost an eye.

When Talia licks her lips and the heady taste of her own blood coats her tongue. She grins. It’s about time they drew her blood—she may have come to Gotham for slaughter, but she likes it when she can get a work-out in, too.

Her opponent shifts, sheathing its daggers to reach behind its back and pull out a long blade with a wicked curve: a scimitar, likely a _kilij_ since it does not possess the graceful arc of Talia’s _shamshir_ , which for this excursion was left at home to gather dust. The Talon widens its stance, holds its sword two-handed, and prepares to rush at her.

The scimitar is no match for her _dao_ , and its wielder even less a match for her, so Talia pulls a gun from one of her thigh holsters and puts a bullet between the Talon’s eyes before it can take so much as a step, one and done. Sometimes an opponent simply isn’t worth the effort.

That’s six she’s dealt with now. It should have accounted for all of them, but the two Talons that take the place of their fallen comrade are undeniable. In between shattering the kneecap of a Talon with her boot and shooting the other one twice in the chest, Talia takes a second to look around. By the flare’s guttering light, she sees that there is only one corpse littering the ground when she should be having to step over a pile of them by now. 

She takes a quick assessment: Cain is currently dealing with two Talons; her two will soon become three, if the telling twitches of the one she got with a headshot are any indication; and then there’s the one on the ground, which lays in three pieces. Arm, body and—head. She re-holsters her gun.

The two in front of her are decapitated in quick succession, then she takes two steps forward and executes the twitching one before it can raise itself to its knees.

She spares one last order for Cain – “Aim for the neck.” – before she takes off at a steady run, heading deeper into the Court’s lair and striking another flare as she goes. Cain curses behind her, but Talia doesn’t slow. He can catch back up to her once he’s done picking off the dregs; if he gets himself killed before then, that just means less work for her.

A second wave of Talons attempts to ambush her almost immediately; faint echoes of the fight she left behind can still be heard if she takes a moment to listen. But there’s no time to stop, no time to listen, and Talia is losing patience with the riffraff wasting her time. She tears through the Talons without hesitation, beheading as many of them as she can and leaving the rest regenerating on the floor for Cain to deal with.

If only the Talon who came for her father showed himself. Then the fight would at least be a test of skill, not simply stamina.

The next glut of Talons, the largest yet in number, comes just as Talia’s reaches a forked path, and requires her to stand and fight if she wants to move past them. It’s as Talia is adding another severed head to her growing collection that she uncovers another of her enemies’ weaknesses: 

The Talons were made to be solitary; they were not made to form a flock, and so when they are forced to work together as they are now, they are unable to account for the positions of their comrades. It is simple for Talia to sidestep a knife and have it stab into the Talon on her other side. Sometimes one Talon will injure another without any intervention from her at all. None of the injuries they give to one another are fatal, granted, but they are distracting. And a distracted enemy is synonymous with a dead enemy.

There’s something else bothering Talia, though. Something that is making this fight easier as time passes, despite their growing numbers. If only she could put her finger on it—but she doesn’t have the time for analysis. Despite the repetitive boredom of killing Talons, it still requires her to pay attention.

For every Talon she kills, it seems that two more take its place. If Talia had ever been curious what it would be like to fight a hydra, she isn’t anymore: the Talons, creatures as dull as she imagines a hydra to be, do well at keeping her on the edge of overwhelmed by virtue of sheer numbers. There are only so many directions Talia can split her attention, and though she hasn’t reached her capacity yet, she is close enough to it that she feels a modicum relief when Cain finally catches up.

“You’re late,” she says.

Cain emits a sharp scoff, but is too busy sawing at the neck of a Talon to reply otherwise. He’s using one of his serrated knives; something certainly has him in a mood.

“Have you noticed it yet?” Talia asks after a few moments spent slaughtering Talons in relative silence.

“I’ve been a little too busy cleaning up after you,” Cain says crankily.

Talia sends him a disdainful look. “They’re herding us.”

Talia’s clash with this particular wave of Talons had begun at the very first fork in the tunnel she had encountered, but during the course of fight she had been maneuvered by the collective bulk of the Talons away from one path and down another. Hemmed in on all sides by assassins, Talia could not rebuff their chosen path. She, too, must make concessions when trying to hold back a waterfall’s flow with just her body as the dam.

“What are we going to do about it, then?” Cain asks, a grudging deference.

Talia’s lips quirk. “Nothing.”

Cain growls but, this time, refrains from cursing.

Even if it had been within Talia’s power to redirect the flow, she wouldn’t have bothered. She’s curious to see what quaint trap the Court has come up with on such short notice, first of all. Second of all, Talia can see a white light, initially just a speck, but growing the longer she allows the Talons to guide her. Talia has never been one to shrink from a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel before. She’s not about to start now.

A new wave of Talons descends upon them; by unspoken agreement, Talia and Cain stop talking to focus on the mission at hand.

None of them, neither the Talons nor Talia and Cain, pay any mind to the trail of bodies marking their path. It’s all starting to feel very mundane: a Talon will get two or three swipes at her, more often than not failing to give her so much as a scratch, and she will decapitate it.

Without any apparent concern for their fallen comrades, the Talons continue to lead them closer and closer to the white light which, with Talia and Cain are actively working with the flow of Talons, soon coalesces into more than just a vague light into an open archway. Between one beheading to the next, Talia is bursting through the archway’s threshold and being nearly blinded.

She is surrounded by pure, shining white. In this new, open space, the floor, the walls, and the high ceiling are all carved from the same polished white marble. But it is the ceiling that transforms the effect from simple dramatics into dazzling torture, because inlaid into the ceiling’s marble are long, rectangular fluorescent lights that beam down at her, neat rows of suns without warmth.

It takes a few long moments (wherein she fells two more Talons) for her eyes to completely adjust.

When they do, the second thing Talia notes is that the marble isn’t pure white, as she had initially thought, but threaded through with smoky grey veins as if to mirror Gotham’s underground with the pollution above.

The first thing she notes is that, however many Talons she and Cain faced in the dark and enclosed tunnels, it is nothing compared to the small army that awaits them.

Talia rolls her neck and sighs. May as well get started, she thinks, already throwing herself at the biggest cluster of Talons. Whether it is due to an uptick in the quality of Talons she is facing or simply that she is beginning to tire from the long, tedious battle, more and more wounds start to find a home on Talia’s body. Superficial, all of them, but stinging. Distracting. _Annoying_ , too, because however superficial the wounds are, they were delivered by assassins who don’t even know how to protect their own necks. She should have been able to evade them.

Technique briefly takes a backseat in favour of her annoyance. It’s only for a moment, maybe two, but it’s enough. By the time she’s finished with the Talons in her immediate vicinity, she looks more like a butcher than an assassin. Her gaze strays downward, at the pile of corpses. At least she would make a skilled butcher.

She flicks off some of the fresh blood coating her sword as she turns toward her next victim. The Talon now in front of her is curiously alone, the rest of its brethren focusing their efforts on Cain. It is smaller than some she has faced, but not the smallest. Talia doesn’t waste energy on hoping that the reason this one is facing off against her by itself means that it will provide a decent challenge. She expects this one will go down much the same as the ones before it—easy, without so much as a whisper to mark its passing.

It darts forward, swiping at Talia with a long sword of some kind. This Talon is faster than many of the others, but Talia still manages to raise her own sword to block it. Then comes the moment their blades clash, the clang ringing in her ears, Talia knows that something about this fight will be different. Something about this _Talon_ is different: it’s hers.

She recognizes him by his surprising strength, which forces her lock her elbows so she doesn’t cede any ground. And if she didn’t recognize him by his strength, then she knows him by his sword, which up close is easy to identify: a _dao_ , much like her own. It is the sword that he used against her father, then against her, and it is the sword that catalyzed her decision to leave her _shamshir_ at home for this mission. 

“Hello again,” she says with bared teeth, and doubles down on where their swords are locked until her Talon is bent backwards.

He slides their swords apart with a _SHIIING_ so loud it manages to pierce through all other sounds of battle around them. He attempts to disengage entirely, hopping back like a little bird, but Talia won’t allow that. Not when she finally has an opponent who she can trust to get her blood pumping.

She lunges forward, body carried by her blade, and laughs when he evades her. It’s almost as if their fight is picking up right where it left off: her, plunging toward him with every strike; and him, darting here and there, not so much defensive as he is evasive, almost taunting. Talia gets the tip of her _dao_ hazardously close to his neck, nicking the black material there, and – at last – he finally makes another attack on her, a wild slash at her ankles. Then, just as he did after infiltrating the League of Assassins stronghold to its very heart, he turns around and runs away from her, right through a gap in the wall-to-wall-to-ceiling marble that she hadn’t noticed previously through the crush of Talons.

Oh, but she’s going to enjoy killing this one.

“Do try to hold the line,” Talia says to Cain, offhand, before she’s weaving around Talons to follow the only interesting one out of the lot.

Between renewed curses, Cain snarls after her, “I hope you die!”

Took the words right out of my mouth, Talia thinks wryly.

It becomes immediately obvious, after following her Talon through the gap, that she had not simply been herded into a bigger and brighter battleground. The Talons had been leading her into a maze of hallways and open spaces, a veritable labyrinth of pristine marble hidden under the broken steel and soot-stained bricks of Gotham.

A plan to trap her here, no doubt. Force her deeper and deeper, turn her in so many different directions that she loses her bearings completely, and then – maybe in a few hours, or within the next day or two, or just at the leisure of their masters – she would be picked off when she was weak enough that they looked strong.

It’s a sound strategy. Perhaps she would even be impressed, if it weren’t for the breadcrumbs of black Talon blood trickling down her sword, over her knuckles and to her wrist before dripping to the floor in quiet plops, marking her path.

To find her way out, all she has to do is follow the blood.

The Talon is fast—faster than Talia. Even as she sprints whenever possible between the many twists and turns of the labyrinth, she finds herself unable to close the distance between them to less than twice the length of her sword. It’s frustrating: if this goes on, Talia will be too tired to fight her Talon. And since Talia doesn’t want to have to kill him quickly, she’ll just have to force him to slow down.

That’s alright. She’s not opposed to a brawl.

On a sharp left turn, Talia slows down just enough to simultaneously sheath her sword and take her gun from her thigh holster. Carefully, she lines up her shot, made difficult by the unpredictable, serpentine movements of her opponent. After another two turns, her Talon finally leads them into a long hallway. Talia is quick to make her move: she throws her gun at his back.

It hits him in the back of the head, and the force of it combined with his own momentum sends him sprawling forward. Instead of wiping out, however, this Talon impresses Talia when he controls his fall by somersaulting back to his feet. It slows him down, though, and that’s all Talia needs.

She takes a running leap and tackles him, hard, to the ground.

They tumble together out of the hallway and into the next room, which is, just as all others before it in the maze, a smoke haze of white. What separates this one from its predecessors is the truly gigantic, grandiose owl-shaped marble fountain taking up the center of the room. In the split second of peripheral awareness that she is able to afford the fountain, she decides to use its positioning to her advantage.

She rolls into a crouch, still grappling with her Talon and hissing as the gold-tipped claws sewn into his gloves rake over her flesh. Then, knees bent in a wide stance, Talia firms her grip and _heaves_ her Talon up and away from her, directly at the fountain. He’s lighter than she thought he would be, considering the amount of steel he carries, but just as skilled in the air as he is on the ground as he twists gracefully to reorient himself. If he was without obstacles, Talia thinks he would land on his feet, like a cat.

But there is an obstacle.

He slams into the towering owl hard enough that Talia doesn’t think it’s her imagination when the stone shudders beneath her feet. His next fall is not controlled; he hits the fountain’s bed with nearly the same force as he did the owl, the shallow water at the bottom an unforgiving cushion.

Talia waits for the stunned Talon to regain his senses, just in case he’s trying to trick her, and approaches the fountain with cautious, soundless steps—though only after retrieving the _dao_ he dropped at some point during their scuffle. She tests the grip and gives it a twirl. Satisfactory, she thinks, and redraws her own.

It’s quiet for a moment, and ever so slightly eerie. If Talia’s mettle were any less, she would be unsettled, off-balance. Yet she stands mere feet from the fountain’s ledge, a sword in each hand, without so much as a tremble. She uses the reprieve to catch her breath, and when her Talon breaks the silence by bursting from the still water, she’s ready for him. He’s holding a knife as long as his forearms in each hand, and he strikes at her in a way that, if she hadn’t dodged, would have carved her torso from shoulder to hip in an unmistakable X.

There’s not enough time for Talia to get behind him before he recovers, but his neck is just as vulnerable from the side as it is from the back.

Talia swings the _dao_ she pilfered, and there is something very poetic that this is the sword her Talon will die by. Given her previous experiences with Talons, Talia foresees that this one stroke of her sword will be the end of her Talon who, while better than the others, is no match for her one-on-one—and they both know it.

Talia is surprised, therefore, when instead of cutting through flesh and bone, all the resistance she meets is air when her Talon ducks. She is so startled, in fact, that when he kicks her legs out from under her, she falls and only just collects herself in time to roll aside to avoid her Talon’s next, much more lethal, blow. The tips of the dual-wielded knives that had been aimed to pierce her eyes sink into the floor to the hilt from the force he exerted. For the barest moment, Talia stares at the broken marble and feels a stirring of adrenaline’s bitter sibling: fear.

The other Talons had made her complacent; even when they saw her dispatch their brethren with a simple decapitation, even when she let herself telegraph her intentions, the Talons had not changed their fighting strategy to compensate. She had thought of them as little more than pieces on a chessboard: they hold power, are able to move and act, but only on the directive of the one moving the pieces. She had thought them unable to adapt, that once given an order, they did not deviate unless given another to override it, even if deviation is integral to their survival. She had looked at them and seen piteous, contemptable creatures with no will of their own and that Talia was doing them a service by putting them down.

She can’t help wondering: is this Talon, is _her_ Talon, somehow different from the rest? He is skilled, of course, but so were the others. He’s fast but—so were the others. She had just been faster. Or was she? Perhaps the only difference between her Talon and the rest is a matter of motivation. Perhaps Talia _had_ been doing the other Talons a service.

Her Talon faces her head-on, just the way she likes to fight. His arms are slightly flared at his sides, and he’s pulled out a new set of knives from his bandoleer to replace the ones stuck in the stone floor. His chest is undulating noticeably, something Talia didn’t see in any of the other Talons.

“Talia al Ghul,” he says. The first words she hears him speak, and it is her name. “The Court of Owls has sentenced you to die.”

“Your Court has overreached its authority,” she says, shaking her head and settling into a ready stance. “They forgot their place in the food chain of this world.”

In the end, the motivations and circumstances don’t matter. Their lives mean little, whether it be to the Court, to her, or to the rest of the world. There is an enemy in front of her, others at her back, and that is all Talia needs to keep going forward.

“Be honoured,” she continues, a light, mocking smile teasing her lips, “for there is no greater predator than I to teach this lesson in a way they will never forget.”

He is utterly unreadable due to his mask, but Talia catalogues the way her Talon’s grip seems to tighten on his knives before he twirls them once, then twice, and resettles them in his hands in a loose and easy grip that his body emulates. He mirrors her stance. Everything goes still and quiet but for the irregular _dripdrip-drip-dripdripdrip_ of fountain water falling from her Talon’s soaked clothes.

Then, as if by mutual agreement, Talia and her Talon both sprint towards each other. They are on a collision course and neither willing to swerve. Talia remains true because she knows that, with the superior reach of her _dao_ , her strike, the one aimed for his jugular while the other is held in reserve, will reach him first. As for him, it’s likely he believes he can take her down with him.

It is the moment after a lightning strike, the air heavy with the promise of thunder. But then, mere inches from losing his head, her unorthodox Talon jumps—flips high in the air to pass, cleanly, right over Talia’s head. He lands behind her after his incredible acrobatic feat, ready to stab Talia in the back, ready to accomplish his mission.

He would have succeeded, if he had been fighting someone else.

If Talia had concentrated solely on what was in front of her.

If she hadn’t kept one _dao_ in reserve.

As it is, she doesn’t waste time by turning around: she simply folds her arm behind her back and, with a flick of her wrist and a little luck, disarms her Talon of his knives. She turns quickly, then, before he can rearm himself. Talia kicks his legs out from under him and he falls, hard, onto his back. As his hands skitter for their fallen weapons, she plunges her other sword through his gut and into the marble beneath, severing his spine.

He makes a noise, choked and wet, that is somehow louder than steel breaking stone. Yet, even as his body trembles with convulsions, her Talon’s hands continue their blind search for his knives. It is only when he regains enough clarity of mind to reach for the knives waiting in his bandoleer that Talia snatches up his hands and, one after the other, nails them to the floor by spearing two of her own knives straight through his palms until he is truly pinned and spread, a butterfly on display just waiting for its sheet of glass.

Talia sheathes her remaining _dao_ , the one she arrived with, and takes a moment to breathe. She slumps forward slightly and rests her hands on her bent knees, unconcerned with the fact that her opponent can see her fatigue. The battle is over, she won, and her Talon will soon be relieved of his head. There’s no need to put on airs or hide weaknesses when her opponent is too busy writhing on the floor in pain to perceive them.

“You fought well,” Talia says once she’s caught her breath.

“I . . . _will_ . . . kill you,” he says through gritted teeth. He’s still, now, utterly still.

Talia crouches down and lays a hand on his neck, index and middle fingers pressed searchingly under his jaw. It’s just as she suspected: no pulse. How curious and depraved. She wonders how the Court creates its Talons; how long they keep; how long it takes them to become like the others, which are either suicidal or complete automatons.

“You fought well,” she repeats, smiling this time. “For that alone, I’ll do you the honor of looking into your eyes as I cut off your head.”

She takes the black material of his full mask in hand and pulls it off. Once his face is revealed, all she can do is stare, surprised to be surprised.

The golden, flashing eyes she almost expects—it fits the whole Talon motif.

The black veins faintly seen from underneath grey-hued skin, like dark worms eating the body from the inside out. . . . Disturbing, but, given the lack of pulse and whatever procedure the Court employed to create the quasi-immortal assassin, it could have been worse.

The scrunched-up features, the way he is biting straight through his bottom lip—this just confirms a suspicion of Talia’s that, no matter that his chest is still and silent, pain is still felt.

None of this surprises Talia. What _does_ surprise her is that the face she sees is one she knows: Richard Grayson, second of her beloved’s adopted sons, who has been missing and presumed dead for years now.

She becomes aware of footsteps coming up behind her, a familiar and unwelcome gait. Her gaze lowers, shifts from Richard’s face to the bandoleer of knives on his chest. Most of the slots are empty, used up; only two are left, but still it’s more than she needs. She lets the Talon mask drop to the floor. Her hand comes to rest on the hilt of one of the knives, feeling the corded texture of the metal handle. She curls her fingers around the hilt, and grips.

“Talia, you bitch,” Cain says as he comes up behind her. He’s out of breath, and not just from exertion. He’s enraged. “If you want me dead at least have the decency to get your hands dirty.”

“Alright,” she says.

Then, in a single, fluid movement, Talia pulls the knife free from its sheath as she stands and, almost before she knows it, she’s buried the blade deep in Cain’s chest. Up through the ribs, straight to the heart. He might make a noise, but Talia can’t hear it past the exhilaration pulsing in her ears. She tears the knife out, only to quickly and brutally thrust it back in and before she lets go. Even if by some chance she missed the heart on the first blow, she certainly didn’t on the second.

He falls boneless to the ground, his legs bent awkwardly beneath him.

She crouches down next to him and checks his pulse, just as she did with her Talon, and gets much the same result. The only difference is that Cain is fully dead, not trapped in suspended death.

“This is me getting my hands dirty,” she says. The last look on his face is that of incomprehension, of stunned disbelief. Unconsciously, Talia reaches out to caresses Cain’s cheek, leaving a streak of his own blood behind. He never had taken her very seriously.

She sighs after a moment, an imitation of regret, and stands. Looking down at Cain’s corpse, she says, almost to herself, “If only you had diversified your skillset to include knowing when to hold your tongue.”

Then she dismisses him completely, refocusing her attention on her Talon and the confounding reality of his identity. He stares back at her warily. The pupils of his eyes are so small, shrunken either from fear or the bright fluorescent light. His irises, awash in gold, wouldn’t look out of place in the face of some malicious, forgotten god from a lost pantheon; to have them set into the wide eyes of a frightened teenager is disquieting.

Talia crosses her arms and drums an index finger against her forearm contemplatively.

“The Batman,” she states abruptly. “What do you know of him?”

Richard’s brow furrows slightly. He keeps his mouth shut.

Talia reaches out and loosely grasps the sword hilt protruding from his stomach. “You will tell me what I want to know.”

“He is an enemy of the Court,” Richard says slowly. “He is to be eliminated. Eventually.”

“Is that all you know?” Talia asks, observing him keenly. He nods slightly, hesitantly; he doesn’t understand what she wants now that it’s not his immediate death.

“I see. Do you know the name Bruce Wayne?” she asks next.

“Yes.”

“What do you know?”

“Wayne is the owner of Wayne Enterprises. He is . . . a potential ally of the Court.”

“And what,” she asks, “do you know of the disappearance of Richard Grayson?”

He stares at her blankly. “Who?”

“I see,” she says again, and she is beginning to. Her hand tightens on the hilt.

“My masters will—”

“Your masters,” she scorns. “You can forget about them. _I_ am your master now, do you understand? I beat you in single combat, which means from here onwards you will follow me and only me, or I will kill you.

“Do you understand?” she repeats.

Richard’s eyes flutter from her face to her sword before he nods.

She can’t trust him, of course. The Court is all he knows, and for as long as this remains true, they own his loyalty as surely as they own his body. But if he were to regain his memories, perhaps through the employ of a Lazarus Pit . . . all he knows and has ever known will be shattered. He will be grateful, angry, vengeful. Vulnerable. To the one who cares for him, to the one who guides him, shall go his loyalty then.

It would require effort, and she doesn’t need more work. She doesn’t need _him_ , but—he is a decent fighter. And besides, she has just given her beloved a son. It is only fair that he does the same. With that thought, she pulls the sword from stone and body, allowing Richard’s spine to repair itself. A little whimsically, she wonders if the healing waters of the Pit will restart his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment or come talk to me on my tumblr [@dolorife.](https://dolorife.tumblr.com/) I have a very, very tentative plan to turn this into a series, but I also have an extremely short attention span, so if you'd like to see a continuation then maybe you could motivate me with your feedback ;)


End file.
